In the spirit of I cannot love everyone. We can love everyone. Kim and I are inviting our friends to explore the Broken Heart Manifesto in community.

Most of this will take shape based on the culture of the community, so there aren’t many particulars yet. But there are a few things which we intend to allow to shape us from without:

• Love God. Love Others. Follow Christ.

  This is our goal. It’s kind of like a dangling carrot, because we will never fully achieve this goal, but Lord willing, this will keep us constantly moving towards the realization of God’s Kingdom.

• The Broken Heart Manifesto

  There is nothing magical about this text. It certainly pales in comparison to the Gospels. But it helps us with two things. First, it helps us focus on what we are for rather than what we are against. Second, it helps us focus on what we do more so than what we think.

  When we read the manifesto, the first thing that comes to mind is, “Oh My GOD! How in the world are we ever supposed to do that?!?” and then we remember that God has already done this for us, Jesus has already shown us how to love, the Holy Spirit already moves in us and gives us the ability to pour out God’s love on others. And, lest we forget any of this, we have books and letters and poems and stories to remind us, all in one nice volume! The Bible is our textbook, the manifesto is just the syllabus.

  We also recognize that many churches put a worship service at the center, and hope people get involved in other ministries on the side. We’re cool with that. But we want to put Jesus’ invitation to “Come, follow me” at the center. (And we guarantee, there will be a lot of worshiping and celebrating along the way.)

• Meals

  We don’t know why, but there is just something about sharing meals together. We don’t have a Theology of Supper, it just makes sense to eat together.

• Prayer

  Although we intended to first consider how we can be an answer to prayer, we recognize we are incapable of any good on our own, and there are so, so, so many things we are just flat-out incapable of. We want to make prayer a discipline–something we do whether we feel like it or not–and allow it to shape us. We use Celtic Daily Prayer, and will gradually adapt it to reflect the thoughts and context of our community.

• Community

  We are not alone in this journey. We are a part of something much larger. Jesus said, “when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that I’ll be there.” (Matthew 18) This puts us in the company of all the saints throughout all time–past, present, and future. It’s a messy bunch in need of as much love as anyone.

  In particular, we are connected with another group of Jesus followers in Seattle, WA, called the Church of the Apostles. We think of them as extended family, and hope to stay in touch as such. They are also kind of like a big sister to us. They’ve been through things we have not yet even considered, and we look to them for guidance and wisdom.

If you live in the TwinCities, and are interested in journeying with us, please visit Corum Dei.

Every time we make the decision to love someone, we open ourselves to great suffering, because those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. The greatest pain comes from leaving. When the child leaves home, when the husband or wife leaves for a long period of time or for good, when the beloved friend departs to another country or dies … the pain of the leaving can tear us apart.

Still, if we want to avoid the suffering of leaving, we will never experience the joy of loving. And love is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking.

- Henri Nouwen in Bread for the Journey

Kim and I weren’t planning on going to the state fair yesterday, but the laptops I setup with a form for my work were having some issues, so I have to go in for triage. Kim met me there, and once I did as much for the laptops as I could, we spent the rest of the evening eating anything we could find on a stick. I don’t think either of us have recovered.

That was definitely the most people I have ever seen at the fair. And I was amazed by how easy it is to fall in love, when you look at every person and wonder what their hopes and pains are. In some ways it was a pointless exercise, because I had no intention or ability to follow though with any of those thoughts. But it was amazing to discover how large a heart can get. I was also surprised by how difficult it was to care for the “beautiful people.” I would think, that in a society where I have been trained by the TV since birth to value beauty and popularity, that I would naturally be drawn to beauty and popularity. But when considering peoples hopes and pain, I was drawn more to all of us regular folks. I don’t know what this means. But it was interesting none the less.

The other interesting aspect of the “economy of love” I discovered in this process is the more you love, the more you can love. I would think that like time, money, and other resources, I would only have so much love to share. So, maybe by allowing myself to love others, I would potentially run out of or have less love to share. But after last night, I love my wife even more. Like I had extra. It will be interesting to follow this observation and see how it plays out once the openness to love is able to convert to acts of love (feeding, providing, sharing, etc.) Maybe once love is expressed through resources like time, and money, it will have to be more closely guarded.

I have been asking some dear friends of mine for their feed back on the Broken Heart Manifesto.

One person asked, “What is your intention with it… what is the next step?”

I am personally trying to take it up, and live it out. If others do the same, that would be wonderful.

In all my reading and thinking and conversations, it seems like there is a fairly strong consensus that the framework of christendom is not sustainable for the next generation of the church. And while I highly value worship as a Christian practice, I’m not sure that it works as the *basis* of following Christ.

So If I am going to try and follow Christ, I’m sure there will be many moments of stopping to worship our creator, but the daily ins and outs of it, it seems, would be more along the lines of the manifesto.

My hope is that more and more communities of Christ followers would be able to make the things the manifesto talks about be the things they come together to do. But that’s in God’s hands not mine.

Today I begin a Journey.

I have been writing and thinking and struggling for a while now, and have boiled all my thoughts down into a single manifesto. I need something to cling to in this world to give me focus and purpose. If you know me at all, you know that my hope is in the grace of God through Jesus Christ. But I struggle with the Institution of the Church, the Religion of Christianity. I feel as if the human structure on which modern Christianity is built–christendom–is now doing more harm than good.

God is good. The church survives in spite of whatever humans may or may not do to hurt or help. That is not my point. I know I will eventually have to write more about this, but for now I want to leave it at this: christendom has failed, the church has not.

Meanwhile, I have been trying to figure out what might be a better framework for the next generation of Christ followers. I have been involved in this whole Emerg[ing|ent] line of questioning and exploration, and yet it seems many of our attempts to reengage the culture get hung up in christendom models. No matter how cool we are, or how welcoming we make our services, or how politically sensitive we try to be–if our goal is to get people in our doors, I think we have lost sight of the gospel. Jesus asked his disciples to follow him out into the world. He never asked them to bring anyone back anywhere.

That’s why I can’t “do the church thing”. My heart is broken for all my friends and all the people I see every day for whom the church has no value, no purpose. At best, they’ve just never encountered Jesus because the idiots on TV turn them off. At worst, they been judged and condemned by the church–hurt physically and emotionally. That breaks my heart.

So, although I am the least qualified to do so, I have written The Broken Heart Manifesto. I have tried to write it in such a way that anyone can take it up, hopefully without any barriers (other than the English language), and allow it to re-form their lives. I an anxious to see what it does to mine. I will be journaling the process, and invite you to do the same.

I am scared.
I am hopeful.

Love God.
Love Others.
Follow Jesus.

Give us this day our daily bread…
We pray for the simpleway community, and the lives of those around them.

community, support